Healing Journeys: Reading Twelfth-Century Miracle Stories as Conversion Narratives

R.I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society explained that the medieval west viewed its transgressive elements as a source of social pollution and relocated them away from mainstream society. There was, however, another way of dealing with society’s perceived dangerous misfits: rehabilitation through pilgrimage. Drawing on evidence from miracle collections compiled in England during the long twelfth century, this article uses ritual theory to show how some marginal elements in society – such as the sick and disabled, the poor and the socially disadvantaged – were depicted by hagiographers as being physically and spiritually transformed by pilgrimage. It also argues that pilgrimage was envisaged as a societal healing process, and that the salvation of sinners had a wider, sociological significance. This article is part of a Special Issue on Marginality and the Medieval Church that examines how categories of marginalisation were constructed, negotiated and resisted within the medieval church.